


Duets by moonlight

by grelleswife



Series: Kuroshitsuji Ladies Appreciation Week 2020 [4]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: F/F, Interspecies Romance, Mermaids, More tags to follow, Ocean, Rescue, Selkies, merGrelle, selkie!Hannah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:35:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24413695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grelleswife/pseuds/grelleswife
Summary: Unlike most selkies, Hannah is shy and withdrawn. Unlike most mermaids, Grelle longs for adventure beyond her people's undersea fortresses. Though hailing from enemy races, their voices make a spellbinding harmony.
Relationships: Hannah Annafellows/Grell Sutcliff
Series: Kuroshitsuji Ladies Appreciation Week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758298
Kudos: 3





	Duets by moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> MerGrelle's appearance is inspired by the Little Mermaid references in side chapter 101.5 from the manga ("That Butler, Requested").

Hannah should have sensed them coming.

She knew the risks of venturing into waters too near the shore, where greedy sailors always kept an eye out for the selkies whose rare pelts they coveted. But how could ill fortune mar such a fine day? Sunlight sparkled on the water with a brilliance that made a mockery of diamonds, and a light breeze ruffled the waves. Perfect conditions for a solitary swim.

Selkies were by and large a gregarious bunch, but Hannah preferred the company of her own thoughts. She seldom joined in the dancing and revelry for which her people were renowned, preferring to sit quietly by the fire. Her cousins joked that they’d met chattier oysters. Hannah saw no shame in loving silence, however. That was why she’d gone swimming in the first place. Seeking a respite from the bustling activity on the island her tribe called home, she’d donned her sealskin and slipped away, not bothering to tell anyone when she’d be back.

She’d swum past schools of argent fish, scales flashing in the sun. They’d looked plump and juicy, but she wasn’t especially hungry and saw no point in hunting for the sport of it. At one point, she’d found herself in the midst of a group of dolphins and happily leapt among the waves with them. After a while, though, she separated from them to go her own way. Hannah noted with mild surprise that she’d swum farther out than usual. She wasn’t afraid, of course, because she wasn’t truly lost; a selkie called the whole ocean her home. The sense that was part magic and part instinct would guide her to the island when the time was right. The warm water rocked her in its embrace, and Hannah closed her eyes as she relished the serenity of solitude.

That must have been when they saw her.

She’d sensed something large abruptly block off the sunlight, but hadn’t paid it much mind. Probably just a cloud. Then, Hannah gasped as she felt something wrap around her, clinging like seaweed, but much rougher, cruelly chafing against her pelt. As she started wildly thrashing in its confines, she realized what this must be: A net. One of the wicked traps that humans used to carry selkies away to the Land. She’d heard the stories. Selkies snatched away from their sacred home and brutally killed for their skins, or forced into a life of bondage as a mortal man’s wife after he hid her pelt out of her reach. She redoubled her efforts, straining against the rope (wasn’t that what it was called?) and biting at it with her teeth. But it held firm, and drew tighter around her. More than that—Hannah felt something tug her upwards. She couldn’t panic, _she couldn’t panic_! She tried to concentrate and focus all her energy on swimming downwards to counteract the pull. To no avail.

No! No! No!

She writhed in frantic desperation, gnawing at the rope so recklessly that her gums bled.

A flash of emerald green caught her eye…a powerfully, scaly tail, like that of a fish. She gawped at the lean, sculpted torso that might have been carved from alabaster, the mouthful of shark’s teeth, and the billowing hair redder than coral. This…this had to be a mermaid. As if the situation couldn’t get any worse!

The mermaid clutched a jagged-edged shell in her right hand, and her gaze traveled speculatively over Hannah’s struggling form. She grinned, revealing even more of her teeth. The sight was not reassuring. Trapped like this, a selkie would be easy pickings for a hungry sea monster, and Hannah couldn’t even defend herself. Still, she supposed a quick death at a siren’s hands was preferable to being skinned alive or trapped for decades in a stone house bearing a filthy human’s children. Hannah couldn’t give a proper scowl in seal form, so she settled for a defiant stare before continuing her struggle. Taciturn she might be, but she wouldn’t leave this world quietly.

The mermaid swam upwards, towards the boat, thought Hannah was too absorbed in her losing battle against the net to track her movements. The selkie concentrated all her strength into one last, futile _push_ …

The net gave way. Its unrelenting bonds loosened abruptly, like limp kelp. Hannah flipped and surged out of the useless tangle of rope. She was free!

“Doing all right, darling?” an unfamiliar voice called out.

It was the mermaid, smiling down on her as she brandished the shell that had severed the net from its tether. After an awkward pause, she chuckled.

“Oh, how silly of me! You can’t talk when you’re wearing your sealskin, can you?”

Hannah shook her head. Magic had its price; for a selkie in this form, that price was spoken language.

“Never mind, love. You’re a cutie regardless! You shouldn’t tarry, though. Those nasty men will have another go at you if you give them the chance.”

The mermaid waved and blew her a kiss.

“Ta-ta for now! Until we meet again, darling!”

She whirled around and sped off, that lithe tail sweeping through the water in broad, steady strokes. Hannah roused herself from her state of bewilderment and did likewise, though in the opposite direction.

She didn’t stop swimming until she reached Yana’s Cove, a spot favored by generations of selkies for lovers’ trysts and other clandestine meetings. 

Hannah vaulted onto a rock jutting out of the waves, which was slick with saltwater. A whispered incantation, and she shed her sealskin, wrapping the silvery fur around her shoulders like a cloak. In human form (if anything about a selkie could be considered “human,”), she was a regal, Junoesque woman, with warm brown skin, platinum hair that streamed in a torrent down her back, and eyes the deep indigo blue of a sky on the cusp of nightfall. The fishermen’s net had left angry red robe-burns across her body. The ocean spray stung them…but that very pain assured her that she was _alive_.

The selkie trembled violently, burying her face in her hands and letting out a sob of relief. The sea was teeming with perils. However, Hannah had never faced the numbing despair of her imminent doom. Death’s gaping maw had sought her, preparing to shred her with its serrated rows of teeth like a rapacious great white.

She lived to sing beneath the moon another evening because the mermaid had saved her.

A mermaid helping a selkie? Whales were more likely to swim among the stars. The merfolk had been her people’s bitter enemies for generations; even the half-blind and patchy-furred elders could not recall a time when their races coexisted in harmony. Border disputes over hunting grounds were as inextricably interwoven into their lives as the tides. Hannah had seen the mangled, bloody bodies of warriors who perished in such skirmishes, twisted fingers clinging uselessly to their broken spears. When she was a pup, her parents had warned her never to stray too far from their tribe’s dwelling on her own. Many an unwary selkie who wandered into the merfolk’s territory was doomed never to return.

‘They’ll gobble you up!’ Father had growled, towering to his full height and curling his fingers into claws. It gave young Hannah nightmares.

The merfolk were beautiful, of course, with shimmering scales and hair that streamed in vibrant bursts of color and eyes more vivid than iridescent abalone shell. No other sea creatures had been endowed with such haunting voices. Their mellifluent songs would cleave your heart in two and put it back together again or make the sun pause in its celestial orbit to attend to the music beneath the waves. Thus the legends went.

Beauty could not be trusted, however, any more than the ocean’s fickle smile on windless days should be mistaken for goodwill. Everyone knew how the merfolk’s melodies bewitched the hearts and minds of foolish sailors. The pitiless sirens lured them from the safety of their boats into their waiting arms, and the hapless souls never escaped that treacherous embrace. With sharp claws and teeth that rent flesh until it dangled like crimson seaweed from the bones to which it clung, the merfolk were a dangerous tribe. As the selkies’ wisdom ran, “The most magnificent of monsters is still a monster.”

Then why had the mermaid rescued her? There could be no doubt in Hannah’s mind that that was her intention. Not only had she used the jagged seashell to cut her loose, she’d deliberately avoided harming the selkie in the process. One could have argued that she merely viewed Hannah as prey. If that was the case, however, why would she swim away from her prospective meal once Hannah was free? She couldn’t get the mermaid’s words out of her mind:

_Until we meet again, darling._

Was that meant as an invitation? A threat? An idle jest?

Hannah sighed and pressed the heel of her palm against her forehead. Well, no matter. She needed to head back home and have the tribe’s healer tend to her injuries. Reciting the counterspell, Hannah slipped on her sealskin and dove into the briny water.

The mermaid had probably been seeking diversion; they were capricious creatures. But deep within, in the part of her soul attuned to the timeless rhythms of the ocean’s ebb and flow, Hannah _knew_ she hadn’t seen the last of her.


End file.
